Буканьерки

The astringent quality of Miss Testvalley's sympathy had always acted on Annabel like a tonic. Miss Testvalley was not one to weep with you, but to show you briskly why there was no cause for weeping.

You know, dear, you've never thought enough about the little things; and one fine day, if one doesn't, they may suddenly grow into tremendously big ones.

The Dowager, to whom life had always presented itself in terms of duty, to whom even the closest human relations had come draped in that pale garb, had found her only liberation in gardening; and since amateur horticulture was beginning to be regarded in the highest circles not only as an elegant distraction but almost as one of a great lady's tasks, she had immersed herself in it with a guilty fervour

My dear, you don't look well. Is anything wrong?" she asked, in the tone of one long accustomed to being told every morning of some new wrongness in the course of things.

My poor Nan, life makes ugly faces at us sometimes, I know.

It was beginning to rain, and she must find a refuge somewhere--a solitude in which she could fight out this battle between herself and her fate.

It must be less wicked to love the wrong person than not to love anybody at all," she thought, considering her own desolate plight. . .

Lizzy Elmsworth was not a good-tempered girl, but she was too intelligent to let her temper interfere with her opportunities.